1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a photoelectric transducer using a liquid containing a silicon compound, and to an electronic apparatus provided with the photoelectric transducer manufactured with this method.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, as an environment-friendly power supply, photoelectric transducers such as a solar battery have been attracting the attention, and single crystal silicon type solar batteries used for satellite batteries or the like, and solar batteries using polycrystal silicon or amorphous silicon are widely used for industries and homes.
The amorphous-silicon solar battery typically has a structure, the so-called PIN structure, in which a first conductivity-type semiconductor layer and a second conductivity-type semiconductor layer (e.g., a P type semiconductor layer and an N type semiconductor layer) sandwich a light absorption layer composed of an I type semiconductor layer, and photocurrent and photo electromotive force are taken out from electrodes using the internal electric field generated in an I type semiconductor layer.
As a method for manufacturing solar batteries at low cost without using large-scale equipments, there has been proposed in the example of the related art a method in which a liquid coating composite containing a silicon compound is applied onto a substrate thereby to form a coated film, and a silicon film, which is formed carrying out heat treatment and/or photo-treatment to this coated film, is used as a semiconductor layer.
International Publication WO 00/59044 is an example of related art.
In the method for applying the liquid coating composite containing a silicon compound onto a substrate, it is known that although 200 through 300 nm thin film can be formed, cracks occur or the film peels off from the substrate when attempting to form a film of the thickness greater than 200 through 300 nm.
However, in the solar batteries of a PIN structure, in order to obtain high photoelectric-conversion efficiency, it is conceived desirable that the thickness of the I layer be on the order of 2 μm. For this reason, the method for applying the coating composite onto a substrate is not suitable, and the forming is usually carried out with a relatively costly method such as CVD.